


Sisters

by edenkings



Category: Talents Series - Anne McCaffrey
Genre: F/F, F/M, sisters!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-27
Updated: 2017-10-27
Packaged: 2019-01-23 23:18:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12518872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenkings/pseuds/edenkings
Summary: Three of the Raven-Lyon sisters in the Mrdini Towers.





	Sisters

**Sisters**

**Laria, Morag and Kaltia in the Mrdini Towers.**

**\--**

Kally was the first to make contact with Clarf Tower; she usually was.

Tplu wasn’t the quietest of the so-called Mrdini Towers, but it was the quietest of the three that the Raven-Lyon sisters occupied by volume of traffic in and out. It was the most recently colonised of the original five Mrdini homeworlds, and so the second-last to be Towered. It rated a Prime of Kally’s quality solely due to the ore that they exported – and the Lyon children were no strangers to big daddies full of ore. Kally’s tower was not quite as luxurious at the others, but then Kally didn’t mind. Clarf, being the Mrdini homeworld, was of course the busiest, the best, and their facilities were opulent. It made up for the lifestyle - Laria was by now used to the workload, but she still envied the freedom her sisters had, but only on occasion.

The other two towers of the original five Mrdini planets were a contrast. Yoshuk and Nesrun still held Sef Tower, which did take second place in the Local Group by mass-lifted, however they had sufficient clout with Earth Prime that when they had asked to remain in their rather cushy post, he had agreed. They had continued to work capably despite the increasing workload with the assistance of an additional T-3, a cousin of Nesrun, though they were all of them caught up with their young families and rarely had time to visit their former home on Clarf.

Ptu had been the most recent Tower added to the local group, open only a year. Bennen was the Prime there. A native of Betelgeuse, he had bought a selection of that planet’s Tower staff who he had liberated from David’s grasp with the assistance of David’s children (just as the Lyon siblings had freed _them_ from their father’s overprotectiveness some years before), and Earth Prime’s outright bribery. Xahra, the younger of David’s daughters had been assigned to Betelgeuse temporarily as a replacement with her partner, Zara Lyon-Maitland, Laria’s next youngest sister, and their daughter Xena. The Ptu Tower crew tended to be rather self-sufficient, and by preference if they left planet, they invariably chose to return to Betelgeuse. They rarely visited Clarf, which was something of a pity, as they were all good natured people and Laria enjoyed their company.

By necessity, the Tower hours on Mrdini planets were somewhat irregular (though not so much as Callisto’s) but it was made up for by the fact that the shifts tended to be short and intense, rather than the longer shifts with the infrequent, but large mass hauls of the big-daddies the Lyon girls had grown up with on Aurigae, Kally being the sole exception. Clarf had the most extreme shifts, with the Tower preferring to work in the very early morning and later in the evening to avoid the worst of the heat. Kif was hotter still, but Morag worked the middle hours in an attempt to stay out of the heat when she chose to go out at the beginning and end of the day. The sisters often spelled each other, preferring to receive and then forward a little extra cargo rather than come in during the middle of their breaks. It had taken a bit of getting used to, but they’d all figured it out eventually, and had learned to plan their lives around it.

Kaltia, after quietly announcing her intentions to Clarf Tower, and receiving Laria’s absent permission, deposited her capsule neatly in the assigned slot, without so much as a disturbance to Laria’s own work. The planets were close enough spatially for that to not be an issue, and Laria had no objections. A pause between ‘ports, and Laria could make out her sister calling a thanks to her T-3 twic, an older woman by the name of Candace, who Laria remembered from her own search for a compatible second. She had been a temporary assignment only due to family reasons, and they’d not achieved a good rapport, though they _were_ sufficiently close to it to be acceptable in the short time between Stierlman and his insecurity, and the unlamented Clarissia with her xenophobia. As such, when Candace had become available long-term, Grandfather had attempted to pair the experienced T-3 with both of her younger sisters when they moved into their own Towers. While it hadn’t worked out with Morag, Candace and Kally had managed to find a nice balance, much to Laria’s amusement. Candace was as opposite to her younger sister as night was to day. Where Kally was fair, yellow-eyed and red-haired, a throwback to the Rowan’s partly Irish ancestry, Candace had the dark-skin and dark-hair of those of Old African extraction. Kally was pretty laid-back, but social – unavoidable in a family as large as theirs. Candace was something of an introvert, and inclined to focus on detail. Laria had oft invited her sister’s Tower team to the gatherings that they frequently had on Clarf, inevitably those invitations were declined by Candace – it was not hard feelings about Laria’s own incompatibility with Candace as her Twic nearly a decade before – merely a preference not to socialise.

It _was_ still Tower hours at Clarf however, though they were shortly scheduled to finish. With Laria and Kincaid still busy, Vanteer had welcomed Kally inside, escorting her across the yard with a parasol in hand to shield her sister’s fair skin from the harsh Clarf sun. Kally had teased him, flirting as she usually did, but it was all good natured. Morag too, flirted with Vanteer, just the same.

_Something about sisters_ , he’d thought a few times, but he’d never made a move on either of them. Perhaps sensing that she would not stand for it. Her sisters would never have meant anything serious about him anyway. Vanteer had been useful, but he was far too mercurial to trust in a long term arrangement. He now had four children, all talented, by various women, but was not inclined to play families with any of them. He was a good father, so more was the pity of it.

As for her sisters, Laria was still trying to find someone to set them up with, but it was rather difficult to find anyone suitable out in this part of space. Tplu and Kif had basically no human presence, bar the Tower and what amounted to an Embassy, as they’d called it in the old days. A few of the multi-planetary corporations had set up offices on Clarf and Sef, those being the two larger planets, but almost nobody had made it out as far as the other planets for anything long term. Bringing her sisters to Clarf became the next best option.

Morag traded off with her Twic for weekends away, which meant they saw her less and Morag certainly envied Kally’s freedom. Laria and Kincaid rarely left Clarf, now, as the rigamarole of getting in a locum was sufficiently not worth it in all but the most serious or important of circumstances. Petra had spelled her a time or two, as had her cousin Josh Raven, but they were still young, and the worry Laria had for her Tower meant she found herself stressing and then checking in, which did not endear her to either of her young relatives.

Joshua, sensing his favourite aunt, raced out of his room, completely abandoning Teacher mid-lesson. Afia, at three, preferred Morag, sensing perhaps another troublemaker-at-heart. Morag _was_ rather a rebel, the underestimated middle-child, and was usually the instigator when the younger Lyon set found themselves in trouble, being old enough to plan and sometimes execute those plans with enough competence to be truly irritating. Laria’s own middle child was full of energy, and tended to get herself in trouble through good ideas with poor execution, rather than the opposite. If she grew up to be like her aunt Morag, though, Laria would have little by way of concern.

Caidee, not yet a year old, had no favourites, merely attaching herself to whomever was offering affection, attention or food. Caidee was a simple soul, and a happy baby and both Laria and Kincaid doted on her.

Morag’s arrival was quieter, and just as informal, shortly after Clarf’s Tower hours finished. Oh, they all knew Grandmother Rowan would disapprove if she saw them (and they all carefully made sure that their grandparents didn’t know the finer details of Mor and Kally’s weekend getaways to Clarf, even if _everybody_ knew that they happened), but between them there really was no need for the pomp and ceremony that was a throwback to the age when their grandparents were the same age the Lyon girls were now.

“News?” Laria queried, as Morag entered the family apartment attached to the Tower.

Morag merely smirked, accepting the not-exactly-but-close-enough-to-be-lemonade that Kaltia proffered. Her eyes flicked briefly to the Dini’s present, subtle enough if you were as familiar as a sister but not noticeable, if you weren’t.

Kaltia filled the gap, “Nothing on Tplu,” she sighed. “Just more ships to be thrown out to the new colonies.”

It was a familiar story. While the efforts at contraception spearheaded by their sister Zara had been successful, the uptake at the notoriously conservative hibernatories had been sporadic. Once the news had become public, inevitably (and they were naive to think it would not), the protests had begun.

On those fleet ships large enough to contain hibernatories, which was few, it was rigorously enforced and supported by the colours who traditionally joined the Navy, but planetside it was left to individual hibernatories to make that decision. On Clarf, if was not so much of an issue, due to the massive overpopulation problems, and most saw the measures as sensible.

On the original Mrdini colony worlds, it was far more controversial, and some hibernatories who had taken up the new changes had been boycotted into submission by the populations that used them. The populations of those planets were descendants of dissidents, forced out by the ruling clans of the original homeworlds, and as such they could be hidebound, not unlike Capella, or oddball, like Truro, or Deneb. Those planets had forgotten the pressures of crowding, and did not see the need. While the charge to access a hibernatory, Laria was told, was nearly negligible by tradition, that, plus donations of supplies in the form of a kind of voluntary tithing, were the only revenue the keepers earned. To lose that was catastrophic to the hibernatory, and many had folded to the demands of their communities.

The upshot was, that there were still literally millions of ‘Dini in need of being moved out to the colony worlds, and that this work usually fell to the Towers.

After the usual pleasantries, Laria’s ‘Dini’s collected the other adults for their planned weekend. Afia’s young pair were still mostly in the nursery themselves, and while Caidee had been allocated her own set they were not yet in fulltime residence with the family, and were not to come this weekend. An advantage to living on Clarf – the infant pair had visited on overnights to familiarise themselves and make the transition to their human family less traumatic. Laria’s own pair remembered the time when they had left Clarf, though just barely, to come to Aurigae. They were not entirely happy memories, though the Lyons had tried their best, there was much that was not yet known, then.

Josh’s two, the eldest to remain in the Tower, were sternly adjured by their older counterparts to take care of the youngest pair. Puffing themselves up with the responsibility given to them, they chirped and whistled and clicked their assent to their orders. They were excellent friends to her son, and Laria had no concerns that they would do well in looking after Afia’s Tr and Bt.

The room thus emptied, Morag was prevailed upon to disclose whatever she had been concealing.

“Bennen and I have come to an agreement,” she said.

Laria blinked, for this was _incredibly_ unexpected news.

“I was fairly sure he was gay,” Kincaid said bluntly.

“Oh, he is,” Morag replied, “But we have both decided we would like children, and being somewhat isolated, it seems we are each other’s best choices. It’s worked out well for you two”, she said, looking between Laria and Kincaid, “So I don’t have any concerns.”

Laria’s own arrangement with Kincaid was ... certainly they adored their children, and enjoyed making them. They had an excellent professional relationship. They were very good friends.

But both were well aware that there was something fairly major missing, though they had chosen to remain as a family unit _despite_ that. And they were _content_.

Laria did not wish that for her sister. Morag deserved more than just content.

A quick look at Kincaid confirmed he had similar thoughts – _oh how well they knew each other_ \- but it just wasn’t the same as, say, the relationship Laria’s parents had.

“I wasn’t aware the bonuses were worth that much to you,” Kally drawled, covering the awkward pause.

Morag smirked. “Let’s be honest,” she said, “I’m the same age that Laria was when she had Josh. Older than mother when she had Laria. Nearly as old as grandmother Rowan was with Uncle Jeran. All you older ones have kids so it’s time for me to as well.”

“You need to stop listening to the dynastic elements in the family,” Laria said drily. “Especially Rojer.” Rojer and Asia were pregnant again, and it seemed that Rojer was taking after Aunt Cera in the competitive stakes. Laria rather thought Asia might be happier stopping at a smaller family, but she wasn’t going to get any more involved with her brothers’ relationships than she had to be.

Morag smirked harder. Laria narrowed her eyes as suspicion dawned...

“You’re already pregnant, aren’t you,” Kally accused, “Whoa, sis, really?”

Morag grinned smugly. “Only a few weeks,” she said.

“Have you told Mother?” Laria sighed.

Kaltia snorted, “No, else we’d’ve heard about it. She’s going to be disappointed that you’re not going the marriage-then-babies route.”

“Not that Mother or Grandmother or even Laria here went the marriage _then_ babies route,” Morag retorted.

Kincaid filled the awkward silence this time, soothing Laria’s ruffled feathers, “If you are happy, Morag, and comfortable in your arrangement...”

“Very!” Morag interrupted.

“... then I am very happy for you, and please do let us know if we can assist in any way.” Kincaid continued as if she had never cut in. “I’m sure it will be good for Caidee especially to have a cousin close in age so near to us.”

“Oh, yes,” Laria said awkwardly, “We’re happy if you’re happy!”

“Well,” Kally harrumphed, “You’re gonna drop me in it next!”

Morag tossed her hair. “Look, I know it’s unexpected, and I _know_ we are all gonna hear about it. And whatever,” Morag could be typically blunt when she wanted to be, “But to be honest I don’t think that Laria’s completely unsubtle matchmaking is going to go anywhere. We’re Primes, and we’re limited to the people that come out this far. And not many people are looking to come this far to stay.”

“True,” Kally agreed, pulling a face. “And meeting someone elsewhere is basically a no as well, because you only get a few days off, and nobody is moving out here just because of that. And the chances of us being moved elsewhere are...”

“Virtually nil,” Laria sighed – they had a point. “I get it,” Laria said, meeting Morag’s eyes. “And I understand. If you want to start inviting Bennen along, please do.”

“Thanks, sis,” Morag stood, and held out her arms, “Group hug!” She ordered with a mischievous smirk.

“Argh,” Kally complained, but the sisters, older and younger, joined their middle sister in a teary hug.

As eldest, Laria was to have the last word, “I’m definitely not telling mother for you,”


End file.
